What to Do if You Spill Water on Your Laptop
Spilling water on your laptop can seem like a death sentence if you’re not prepared with the right tools and techniques.
However, if you do everything in the correct order, you can often recover your laptop and prevent any damage that could shorten its lifespan or prevent it from being completely usable.
For some tips and information on what to do if you spill water on your laptop, read more below.
What to Do if You Spill Water on Your Laptop
Turn off the laptop
The moment a liquid content falls on your laptop, the first thing to do is to completely shut down the laptop down by pressing and holding the power button for a few seconds. Dont try to shut it down manually as that will delay time. The longer it keeps running, the more damages can cause so immediately such happens, turning off your laptop with the power off button should be the best option at that time.
Remove all plugged in devices
Your laptop may have been plugged in to charge or any other reason before the water got spilled on it. Right after turning it off, the next thing to look at is to remove all plugged in device such as charger, mouse, USB drive, Keyboard (if there is any) in order to prevent electricity to still run through it.
Electricity running through it will not only go on to damage more but can also cause shock if care is not taken. When unplugging, make sure you do so with a dry hand or a dry clothe and not a wet one.
Remove battery
Removing the battery is important. Not only does it open space for extra ventilation to pass through the laptop but it also prevents the water reaching the battery area which can cause more damages.
It is believed whiles the battery is still in, there is a little power left even though the laptop has been switched off so there can still be a bit of destruction whiles the battery is still in. Since we want to completely cut off power sources, the battery should also be removed.
Dry and drain your laptop
Now, all electric pluggins has been plugged out to preven shock and extra damages. The next best thing to do now is to reduce more water from entering the laptop by draining and drying the laptop.
In drying the laptop, you can turn it upside down or in a v-shape and then you place it in a sunny place for a dry up. You can also drain the laptop using a liquid absorber such as heavy towel or cotton clothes in places where it is necessary and you can also use cotton wool in tiny places where a bigger absorber can’t reach.
Take it to a specialist if possible
Don’t switch it on yet. Immediately locate a repairer for your laptop to be opened up and checked for other internal damages which has been caused. You may have done all the above but taking it to repairs is also very important.
Its better to pay some few transportation money to get your machine repaired than to wait for further damage control whiles it keeps. Liquids such as soda and coffee for instance has higher damages if not react quickly and thats why its advisable to seek immediate assistance from an expert.
The repairer opens it up and check all internal damages and do excessive clean up if necessary. After everything is done, If repairer deems it fit to be turned on, then that’s a good news.
What should i do next?
If you followed the above procedures, then you have now done your part and you are to wait for the repairer to give the final verdict.
Can you recover data from a wet hard drive?
Water may damage the hard drive’s electronics. But since the data on the hard disk drives are stored magnetically, it remains on the platters, which helps professionals to recover data from water-damaged hard drives or laptops incase you loose any data.
How do I know if data has been lost?
Everything including the hard drive depending on how the situation happend will be removed and dried up before fixing them back inside. Now, to know if your data has been lost or not, you have to switch on the laptop using the manual process and keep an eye to see if there is any rebooting error.
If not, just wait for it to completely switch on and look through your hard drive system to see if any data has been lost or not. If data has been lost, then you may have completely lost them or you can possibly use a data recovery method to try and get them back.
Conclusion
Water getting poured on your laptop can give you a worried face. The damages alone it can cause and the money you have to use for repair when you don’t have any can even be more sickening. Following the above can help keep it for longer and sometimes too can cause no problem at all if the situation wasn’t that serious.
